INTRODUCTION

    As you all know, our topic will be Muslim art. To quote Elizabeth Siddiqui, “art is the mirror of a culture and its world view”. Indeed, art is indicative of the “Muslim view of the spiritual realm, universe (…) and the relationship of the parts to the whole”.

    Islamic art is characterized by primary forms: arabesque, calligraphy, geometric and floral patterns which are often interwoven. Art is mainly directed towards ornamentation rather than art for art’s sake.

    God, “Allah” in Arabic, is at the centre of the Muslim universe: it is called the Unique, The Holy, the Most Merciful, etc. – there are 99 names. Because of this overwhelming presence of “Allah”, idol-worship is strongly prohibited: no human being deserves as much admiration as God himself. This point leads us to inquire into the crucial theme of figural representation in Islamic art. Our work is based on Terry Allen’s brilliant essays on this topic Aniconism and Figural Representation in Islamic Art.

    To start with, you need to know that there is an important dichotomy in Islamic art between secular and religious art, upon which we will insist in this presentation.

 

The religious the secular

 

 

Religious Aniconism

    I’ll briefly deal with some historical facts as far as iconoclasm is concerned. On the one hand, in Byzantium, iconoclasm consisted in the prohibition of the reproduction of the representations of saints, Christ or God. You have to bear in mind that in Byzantium, the iconoclastic controversy reached a climax during the Middle Ages as witnessed by many statues destroyed between 400 and 800. Likewise, the Fall of Constantinople (in 1453) implied the destruction of many libraries and the like, which were food for thought and food for art. On the other hand, in Western Europe, iconoclasm did not really apply.

    Concerning the Islamic world, according to oral tradition in the early history of Islam (8th century), figural representations were allowed as long as they did not represent icons, thereby capable of encouraging idol-worship. Nevertheless, iconoclasm was soon preached and imposed, as stated by the specialist Thomas Arnold in 1928. According to what Muhammad said, (words of the latter are called hadiths) [found by the same Arnold] secular images were tolerated, provided that they were not objects of prayer.

    However, the painter’s power of usurping the “creative function” of God was deemed dangerous. Additionally, any depiction of God or its prophet was strictly prohibited (fig. Muhammed visited by angels).

 

 

 

    Still, the “Islamic” point of view on figural representation was quite flexible: the theologians had a certain opinion, which they did not automatically share with Muslims. Because of this flexible point of view, according to Terry Allen, the notion of “iconoclasm” (i.e. the “rejection of images”) is not relevant to the Islamic case which he prefers to call “aniconism” (i.e the “non-use of images").. Besides, the monophysite churches in Syria and Upper Mesopotamia - an area peopled by Christian Arabs- are characterized by non-representational decoration, which highlights the continuity of practice between non-representational Arab and Islamic religious art.

 

Representational Secular Art

    In secular art, figures changed during the transition from late Antiquity to the Islamic era. The shift was sensible as early as 11th cy as there was a reduction of representional art in both number and dimension. In Samarra, for example, frescoes of dancing girls were preferred to the carved façade of Mushatta or the 3-dimensional erotic sculpture of Khirbat Al-Mafdjar. To put it in other words, licence in art was progressively to be abandoned.

    Also noteworthy is the fact that Arabic books, along with the Arabic language and even the Holy Qu’ran are said to be scientific. Thus, the only literary works are mainly to be found in Islamic India (current Pakistan along with its neighbours) after the Mongol invasion in early 13th cy: they consist in narrative images representing the legendary heroes (cf the illuminated manuscript of Shah-Namah for India, fig. 38 and that of Maqamat).

    We’ll set aside Umayyad architectural decoration, wall painting and manuscript illustration representing the ruler’s palace, bath and the illustrated codex.

We shall now focus on the ornamentation of pottery, metalwork and woodwork.

 

The phoenix

- Friezes or fields of animals such as dogs, fish...etc; (“loosely auspicious” animals) = those images are referred to as isolated images.

- Heroes make up princely cycles (festive aspect, also called imperial cycles as they represent rulers). See Persian ceramics of the 12th and 13th cy.

- Planetary and zodiacal symbols fall into the group of cosmic cycles.

EMBLEMS

    Portraiture and narrative cycles, rather common in antiquity, soon gave way to emblems in early Islamic period. Emblems require visual details only to identify the character, not to indicate action or setting. Thus, pictures from different narratives may be juxtaposed so as to suggest a single theme that connects them.As mentioned above, the only works to be truly narrative, in some sense, are the illuminated manuscripts of Shah-namah (15th cy) and Maqamat, but they remain exceptions.

    Finally, the unreligious princely cycles are almost the only works to be representational but that excludes the narrative aspect. This shows the gap between this culture and the humanistic artistic Western culture and leads to the fact that representational art did not disappear but the purposes or intentions behind significantly changed. The reason why the arabesque superseded narrative cycles is the strong unity of the Islamic civilization which is said to be the supra-ethnic one; that’s also why the mosque is aniconic (a signal of the abolition of any human distinctions). So, aniconism goes with the lack of narrative arts.

 

GLIMPSES

The examples discussed below are reproduced in Oleg Grabar’s work, L’Ornement (Paris: Flammarion, p55-56)

    I will first deal with the architecture of Khirbat Al-Mafdjar (Umayyad palace) and then with the calligraphy of the manuscript Maqamat. Khirbat Al-Mafdjar is known as “Desert Castles”(a most romantic name!) and they are situated in the North of the Dead Sea near the town of Jericho. The scope of my examination about this set of buildings will be limited to geometry.

- The first kind of geometry is said to be implicit as the motifs are often human, and it is not rare to find floral motifs as well. The emphasis is laid on circularity: circles or semi-circles prevail, see fig. 99 and 100.

- The second kind of geometry is made up of fully closed geometric units (fig 101).

- The third one is often to be found on window grids, see fig.102,103,104. Its method is reminiscent of wall paper as it is often horizontal; the patterns are linear and represent repetitive motifs. Another aspect of this geometry is the strict delimitations of motifs (105).

    Geometry, in fact, is curiously very much influenced by “textile aesthetics” since patterns are wrought out and interwoven like clothes items.

    Secondly, I would like to say a few words about the esoteric meaning of calligraphy. First, in an artistic sense, if you take 2 letters from the Arabic Alphabet lam-alif ﻝ ﺍ, will bring to mind the embrace of 2 lovers (ﻼ ). Likewise, the esoteric meaning is to be found in the writing of prayers transformed into birds (fig.57) or into boats (fig. 60). In addition, the Arabic language itself is known as the holy language of Islam, which is made up of 28 letters, which are prone to refer to the number of days in a month. That is telling evidence of the deep influence of astrology.But such an artistic approach can also be considered blasphemous as evidenced by the quite ambivalent romantic line: “my eternal prayer is the kuranic verse of your face” (my translation, cf p56). Furthermore, unreadable writings exist but are said to be those of Angels, according to medieval theology (see fig. 61).